Children & Materialism

Learn about children and materialism from Dr. Kimberly Williams in this Howcast video.

Transcript

We definitely live in an era where children want so many things. I think society, definitely, shows children that they want the biggest and the best of the newest items all the time. But this really can become problematic. I like to use a term called "affluenza," which describes the epidemic of people attributing their self-worth to the material belongings that they have. While I'm not saying that money is a bad thing, money is wonderful and it affords our children different opportunities, it does have to teach the right lesson to our children. We want our children to recognize that they are better people, and they are above and beyond the monetary things that they have.

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I often work with families and help them to recognize that it's time, and time together at the dinner table or teaching moments before bedtime that are far more important than your child having the newest and latest gadgets and electronics. Sometimes when children don't realize their self-worth, and they are only gratified by material things, they're less resilient. What this means is with less resiliency, when things don't go their way, and when they don't have everything they want, they really can't deal with it. And they have trouble with the cause and effect of problem solving. So people often don't recognize that materialism in children is really something that we need to work towards decreasing and limiting. And these are just some of the basic points about children and materialism.